


Desiderium

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: The Odalisque Timestamps [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anger, Bad Days, Body Worship, Comfort, Fisting, Fluff, Longing, M/M, Memories, Nostalgia, Sub Drop, both the boys being a little crabby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:03:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2780903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You are unwell,” Hannibal considers and Will makes a sound that cuts his throat with the sheer force of it.</i>
</p><p>  <i>“No. I am fucking fine.”</i></p><p>  <i>“Will.”</i></p><p>  <i>“Fine. I’m fine. I’m not sick. I’m not tired. I am not - I just. Want to be alone. For once.”</i></p><p>Even wolves have bad days sometimes...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Love_mooses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_mooses/gifts).



> An awesome [commission](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/donate) for our lovely [fishybeer](http://fishybeer.tumblr.com/), who requested anything and everything Odalisque. Here you are, love, we really hope you like it!

It is rare that Will bristles. Usually if someone annoys him to the very depth of his being, or he is patronized into a position he detests. Then he will snarl, draw his lip back and narrow his eyes, like a cat cornered.

It’s sunny today.

Too sunny maybe.

Or perhaps it doesn’t matter.

And Will’s lip draws back on a snarl and he twists from Hannibal’s grip and shakes his head.

“I’m… not in the mood,” he mutters, drawing a hand through his hair, huffing an annoyed breath when Hannibal steps close again, breathing slow and even, until Will just jerks forward, turns to face him again. “Stop it.”

A brow lifts as Hannibal regards him, and steps nearer another step, and then another. Looming over him now, shoulders drawn up, and expression distantly curious. A tiger watching a hissing housecat - a curiosity, amusing, and easily crushed beneath his paw.

“No,” he replies simply. He reaches faster than Will can duck away from him and catches him by the hair, reeling the boy in against his chest.

His eyes narrow, bottomless black, and he raises his chin at an angle, eyes narrowed in pleasure.

“I do not recall asking if you were in the ‘mood’. Awful boy, I have spoiled you into thinking that your whims are worth my attention,” he sighs. “Tsk. The fault is entirely mine, of course. I will take the responsibility upon myself, then, to rid you of these notions.”

Will makes a frustrated noise and twists harder, pressing his fingers against the pressure points Hannibal has taught him to find and bending enough to twist himself free again, before his hair is snared.

“God fucking dammit Hannibal let me go, I am not fucking kidding.” The words are sharp, surprising, even for their games, and he glares when Hannibal frowns at him, eyes still dark but no longer pleased with how Will is speaking to him.

“I fucking said no. Back off.”

If Will was asked to pinpoint exactly why he was upset he wouldn’t be able to. He has no idea why his blood is boiling and his own breaths feel like hurricanes in his ears. He just knows that right now he does not want to touch, to fuck, to play, to do anything but curl up in a ball and hide somewhere.

Hannibal is equally uncertain why he releases Will, letting him twist free of his grip. More uncertain still why he doesn’t immediately level him to the ground with the back of his hand for the explosion of expletives. On any sort of normal day, he’d have pinned him to the ground by now, blood between the boy’s snarling teeth, fucked into sobbing apologies for his poor judgment in lashing out at Hannibal in such away.

He’s still quietly thunderstruck as Will turns to stomp up the stairs, kicking off his duct-taped boots behind him to bounce down the stairs unheeded.

Fingers flex to work the feeling back into them, tingling from Will digging against the median nerve of his wrist, and the boots are picked up, gripped in harsh hands. The doors to the study slam, and Hannibal’s eyes close at the bang. For an instant, the house is startlingly quiet, no music playing as Will usually prefers when he’s studying, no sounds of a shower, no chatter in and out of an increasing array of languages about how the boy’s day had been.

Steadily, he ascends the stairs after Will, and does not knock before opening the door, gaze sharpened.

“Will,” he interjects past Will’s drawn breath, jaw tight, his temper thin as the skin stretched across his thrumming pulse. “Explain yourself before I force you to do so.”

Will’s jaw works and he turns away, cheeks flushed and eyes narrowed.

“I just want to study,” he says, turns when he feels Hannibal step closer again. “Alone.”

The boy is coiled, shoulders drawn over where he sits at the desk, giving him the appearance of holding his back arched, eyes narrowed beneath his unkempt hair. Hannibal drops his boots at his feet with a thud, and stretches his fingers before curling them into a fist.

It lingers, a moment too long perhaps, before he releases it.

“What has happened?” Hannibal asks, forcing his tone to quiet.

“Please,” Will sighs, teeth gritted - bared, by all appearances. “Hannibal. Alone. Fucking alone. I want to fucking read.”

Hannibal’s lips press into a frown, a furrow in his brow, and he isn’t sure what to make of how the words feel against him.

He ducks to pick the boots up again, and does not reach for Will this time. The anger fades, lost in the gust of cold wind that batters him from this boy, cruel and dreadful though he is. His hands itch not to beat him into submission but rather to push the hair back from his eyes, to cup his cheek and stroke his thumb across it.

An alarming change - Will’s mood, Hannibal’s feeling about it all - but he files away this thought to analyze later.

He does not reach for him, but merely hums his concern.

Will’s jaw works again, he doesn’t draw a breath nor release one, but he slowly lets his eyes slide to Hannibal, waiting for him to leave, seething that he hasn’t yet, that he is still lingering there. Then he parts his lips and looks away.

“You are unwell,” Hannibal considers and Will makes a sound that cuts his throat with the sheer force of it.

“No. I am fucking fine.”

“Will.”

“Fine. I’m fine. I’m not sick. I’m not tired. I am not - I just. Want to be alone. For once.”

Hannibal considers the boy again until Will turns to him with such venom in his expression that he merely chooses to leave him be, where he is. Alone, for once.

Will watches him go, swallows thickly when the door closes to the library before standing up and throwing himself violently into the wide window seat to curl into a ball.

He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know.

He woke up that morning feeling like his lungs were on fire and his chest was swelling.

He stares out the window, now, watches the water on their beach, the trees move with the wind just before it. He thinks of his friends. Wonders if they are in the FBI academy now, if they miss him. He wonders if Bev still wears his boots and if Zeller has managed to quit smoking, like he said he would try to.

Will wonders what their classes are like, what the academy is like, the people there the atmosphere. He wonders what his life would have been like, there.

Without Hannibal.

Without this.

With a groan he brings his hands to his face to viciously wipe the dampness from his eyes before they turn to tears.

It’s irrational and stupid. There was never a choice. Will knows that had he stayed, had he pursued the FBI, given into the potential that Jack had seen in him, he would be miserable. He would fall too quickly into the minds of the killers he was analyzing, would sink too deep. Drink more, smoke more, hurt himself, hurt others. Get caught.

He draws a dry sob through his nose and shakes his head, hands pressing harsh against his eyes as he sits, thinks.

He would have been miserable. He knows he would have.

But he wonders if that matters.

It’s very early evening by the time Will finally uncurls from the loveseat, muscles screaming in pain from how they have been folded, bladder aching with the need to empty. Will makes his way to the bathroom down the hall quietly, takes his time washing his hands and running the cool fingers over his face. 

He’s itching for a cigarette.

But he aches for Hannibal more.

He finds him in the living room, heavy book propped up on his knee and a glass of dark liquid - not wine - beside him in the small table. Will swallows, feels his throat tighten at seeing him there, waiting, concerned, _his_. Without a word he pads over, socked feet silent until he reaches the couch and sets his knee on it. He moves, curling up with his head against Hannibal’s lap, pressing against his stomach in a desperate nuzzle until he feels a hand settle against his hair.

His hand twines softly through the curls, still damp, to stroke it from his face, book balanced on the arm of the couch beside him.

"There is tea," Hannibal intones, without rancor or accusation, an offer only. "If you would like it."

He doesn't tell Will how deep his concerns ran in such a short time apart, a chill wind caught between them. How vast his acquiesence, how suddenly he would give so much. How dark his thoughts became, guessing at what could have rattled his boy so entirely.

He doesn't tell him that if Will truly wished it, he would let him go. Spend his own life wanting, aching for his little wolf, to give Will his youth, his freedom, away from Hannibal and this life.

This life that he all but forced him to take, and in doing, took all those other possibilities in the process.

That there isn't anything in the world he wouldn't do to ensure the light remained luminous in Will's wide blue eyes.

Hannibal instead remains quiet, affording Will his space to speak or stay silent. Without asking, he folds the book aside and reaches for the crumpled cigarettes brought to the table beside him. Hannibal places one between his own lips, lights it with a wooden match that flares acrid, and shakes the flame out to drag, once, and press the filter to Will's lips instead.

"Anything," comes Hannibal's response, after long silence, and with no more explanation than either needs.

Will exhales slowly, breath not quite even, and tilts his head back until he can lie comfortably, head in Hannibal’s lap, eyes closed, throat working before he opens his mouth again and sighs, blinking his eyes open to look up at Hannibal where he sits.

“Some days I miss it there,” he admits, quiet, gentle. He doesn’t accuse, he doesn’t rage now, as he had before, and even then it had been a fear response, biting the hand that was keeping him from -

\- from what? Keeping him from the unknown, perhaps, keeping him safe. Keeping him whole.

“Some days it gets hard to contain that,” he sighs, takes the filter between his lips again and takes a very deep drag to feel his lungs burn again, before he exhales, turns his head to catch the warm fingers against his cheek between his lips, kiss them, suck them softly into his mouth.

They are withdrawn nearly as soon as they are taken in. To handle the cigarette, to move his book, to sip his own tea, now cold.

It’s a fair admission, precisely the one Hannibal had envisioned to be the issue, and precisely the one that he had hoped not to hear. Fear is nearly an unfamiliar to him, now, too long divorced from the last time he truly felt it - Will pale and bloodless across his dining table, and before that many decades removed.

He feels it now, the dryness of his tongue, and the taste of aluminum blooming from jaws made suddenly too tight to allow words.

It takes several minutes, the cigarette held to Will’s lips when he leans for it, withdrawn when he has filled his lungs with the expensive smoke not normally allowed in the house itself, before Hannibal allows himself to speak again.

“It may become harder, still,” he allows. “Over time, as you begin to see its passage more clearly. The sacrifices made, the lives you may have lived, experiences lost.”

_Alone._

_For once._

And yet for the truth of it, Hannibal cannot bring himself to the admission of his own thoughts in that dire silence between them. To free him, to let him have at the world and see what comes of it. Experiences Hannibal has had and tired of, that Will has never - may never - know.

“Perhaps it is a cruelty,” Hannibal considers instead, ashing the cigarette into the cold dregs of his tea, “what I have done to you.”

Will’s brows furrow and he regards the man above him, tense and exhausted, and it occurs to him that for the first time, he has seen Hannibal genuinely worried, genuinely afraid of something that could happen, caught between the right thing and the thing he wants instead.

He wonders if this was how Hannibal had fought himself as Will had bled on the table.

He wonders how much it took for him to make that call.

“The only cruelty you have ever inflicted upon me was leaving me in Baltimore, alone.” he tells him, voice rougher, eyes serious when Hannibal looks at him again. Will swallows, shifts to sit up, moves to take the cigarette from Hannibal’s hand before sliding into his lap.

Just like he had once, in the car, months and months ago now, over-confident and excited in the newness of the man before him.

“Never ask that of me again.” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss Hannibal softly against the corner of his mouth.

Hannibal lifts his hands from Will’s thighs, spread across his lap, and instead frames his face. He smooths the boy’s wild hair from it, and presses a kiss to his brow, his nose, and sinks into a kiss all too short-lived before nuzzling softly against his cheek instead.

“Despite the pleasure I take in your discomfort,” he murmurs, rueful, before his voice softens again, “I do not wish you to be unhappy, little wolf. Whatever that would mean. Whatever that might require - whatever you would ask of me - you will have it.”

The words surprise Hannibal, to hear them said so lucidly in his own voice, to meet Will’s eyes and realize after he has said them how entirely he means them. These are not the empty promises so many boys have heard as they coiled in his lap, mewling and eager, betrayed instead by the desperation underlying them.

From the moment that Will grinned at him from the floor, blood between his teeth and bruises blooming on Hannibal’s thighs, and swore that he was the best fuck he’d had all week.

From the front seat of the Bentley, with the boy launched wild and wanton into his lap.

Over coy dinners and brutal nights, affectionate violence and the cold cruelty of the basement, from Baltimore to Greece and so many points between at which Hannibal tried and failed to shake the thought of him.

Hannibal snorts a soft breath of bitter amusement against the boy’s cheek, soft and sun-kissed, and kisses it fondly as he tucks a curl behind Will’s ear and murmurs, “My Salome. I would deny you nothing.”

Will smiles, lets his eyes close in pleasure as he sits more comfortably against Hannibal, closer, pushing intimately against him as he turns his head to let the cigarette drop unfinished into the glass Hannibal had used for the ashes.

"Allow me my lapses," he says softly, "and never doubt that I want to be nowhere else but at your side."

He considers his potential, never once wasted. His skills with language honed, his memory exercised, his thirst for knowledge fuelled, his desire sated with fingers and lips, belts and ornate plugs.

"And I need you to remind me," he sighs, turning to direct his words against Hannibal’s ear as his fingers slip down to work his belt loose, "to watch my language. And to watch my tone."

Hannibal hums to mask the sigh of relief that he will not allow himself to show, his touch resting against Will’s legs, comfortably still.

“And so you will remain,” he murmurs, chasing Will’s lips but not yet kissing them, a brush of movement across. “At my side, beneath me, above me, near me always.”

A sharp breath is drawn as Will slips the belt free of Hannibal’s waist and offers to him across his palms, the barest narrowing of his eyes and a hint of teeth in his grin.

“Six times,” Hannibal tells him, as he takes the belt in one hand and Will’s hair in the other. “And double for your insolence, my beautiful, terrible boy.”

\---

It is rare that Hannibal is gone without warning. Rarer still to be gone by the time Will awakens, with breakfast left warming in the oven for him and coffee brewed, and not home before dark.

The sun has just extinguished itself against the horizon of darkening ocean when the car door shuts, and there is the sound of keys in the lock.

He enters without bags, no groceries or books, merely himself and an inscrutable expression that he wears all the way into the kitchen.

Will looks up, uncurls from the couch where he had entrenched himself reading one of Hannibal's Lithuanian medical textbooks, practicing the pronunciation, the rhythm of the words. He sets it away, stretches his arms above his head as he pads quietly to the kitchen on bare feet, pants loose against his hips and shirt one of those he finds great pleasure in hiding from Hannibal's ire: stretched ragged, with a hole in his collar.

He finds Hannibal leaning against the counter, a glass of wine poured but not yet taken up between his flat palms.

Will smiles, swings slowly through the doorway before draping himself against the older man, humming his pleasure at having him home, dropping a hand to settle between Hannibal's legs to gently rub there.

"Was thinking you'd decided to tour the islands,” he whispers.

“Would that I had the will for it,” the man responds, an entirely incidental pun that would normally give him a great deal of pleasure, and now yields little beyond a thinning of lips as he takes a sip, rather than a taste, of his wine.

He regards Will’s fingers for a moment more - the touch familiar, too much so. He knows these hands, has felt the boy’s clever ministrations more times than he can remember or understand, and in doing, knows the moment that Will will turn his wrist and tug lightly at the zipper.

He does, of course.

And Hannibal catches his hand to stop its movement.

Without explanation, he gently pries Will’s hands free of him, his arms in kind, and takes up his glass to remove himself from the kitchen. There is a steadiness to his movements that is nearly metronomic, each step perfectly spaced, each breath timed with an exactitude that would appear as entirely without thought to anyone observing.

Anyone but Will.

“Please pick up your books,” Hannibal intones as he passes through the house to the large sitting room beyond the living room. A space meant for entertaining, with ceilings that span to the height of the second floor, polished floors of native wood, massive windows that look out onto a balcony, across the beach.

He settles at the piano - not his harpsichord, not the instrument he prefers at all - and does not play, watching instead the darkness creep across the sky to chase the sun into the oblivion of night.

Will tilts his head, keeps his weight against the counter a moment before chewing his lip and moving to follow Hannibal through the house.

They rarely use this room, rarely spend time here at all.

Hannibal had found that teaching Will to play piano was futile, despite the stripes against his thighs, his back, his fingers - one notable time against his cheek - that color him at his mistakes. He will not learn it, he cannot.

Will lingers before taking a few steps closer, ignoring the instructions to take up his books and instead settling against the keys, sending pleasant discord through the instrument before leaning in to kiss Hannibal softly.

"Later," he promises, "once I make more mess." He's grinning, playful and warm.

The sound of the piano ringing foul through the spacious room - acoustics such that it resounds in Hannibal’s ears - pulls his jaw tighter, muscles tightening at the corners of his eyes. It is hardly a reaction at all, for most, but for Hannibal is as overt a reaction as if he had smashed his wine glass to the floor in irritation.

Annoyance.

Frustration.

Resentment.

“Get off of the piano,” he says softly, setting aside his glass of wine on the sill of the window beside him. Will is scarcely given time enough to blink in confusion before Hannibal closes his eyes, and without opening them again he snatches Will by the hair and pulls him from it, to the ground, at his feet.

“I am aware, entirely, that it is not your money that you would use to repair it, but that does not mean I wish to spend my own on it.”

On any of this, at the moment. This house that is not his own, this piano that he plays only grudgingly and even then rarely. The clothes that cling cloying to him in the insufferable heat, the rattle of hunger in his belly not merely for the catch of the day from the docks but for a meat far more substantial.

His fingers coil into a fist as he looms over Will.

“Pick up your books,” he repeats again, and then reconsiders. “My books. From my couch.”

But it is not his couch, the soft velveteen he chose for the beautifully appointed home in Baltimore, because its shade complimented the reclaimed wood so ideally, and on which he promised countless boys the world and more, and then snatched it from their grasping hands as they stretched towards the ceiling, paling blue with Hannibal’s hands across their throat.

He closes his eyes and swallows hard.

“Go, Will. Now.”

Will’s brows furrow, just gently, and he turns enough to slip from Hannibal's grip.

"So possessive today," he says softly, finds that there is no humor to meet his words, a coldness instead, almost a void that stills Will’s motions. He swallows, adjusts his position into a pleasant kneeling, thighs spread, fingertips against the ground before he lifts one hand to touch Hannibal's thigh again.

"William."

Will swallows.

"You're very tense," he murmurs, winces when his wrist is snared and twisted hard enough to almost dislocate in one motion.

"Get out," Hannibal repeats, the words like ice, fingers curling to press nails into Will's pale skin when he parts his lips to argue, soothe.

"Get out of my sight,” he breathes, dropping Will’s hand. "Now."

Will shudders, brows furrowed and eyes bright with worry and genuine fear, before he licks his lips and very carefully pushes himself to stand. He makes a point to gather the books lying around the living room, careful against his stomach before he turns for the kitchen, lip between his teeth and pressed there hard, refusing to look at Hannibal again.

Hannibal had hoped that watching him go, putting distance between them, would assuage the ravening rumbling rough inside his stomach, but it does nothing beyond narrow his eyes. A predator’s instinct, animalistic and savage, to chase the boy down and send the books spilling from his hands, to drop him sprawling to the floor beneath Hannibal’s weight. He would fuck him until he was sobbing, Hannibal decides, until the tears choke childish and soft in his throat on meek little pleas. He would turn him to his back and taste the salt from his cheeks and sink his hands into the boy’s throat to mark the shades of pink, red, crimson, purple, blue that he turned, a wondrous spectrum whose colors feel as though have nearly faded from Hannibal’s memory entirely.

He promised Will once that were he to eat him, he would eat his heart raw, and the thought sends a shudder through his limbs that tightens his fingernails into the palm of his own hand. The blood feels hot on his fingers, the sweet muscle caught between his teeth, spilling warm down the back of his throat, and he drops to sit, back against the keys, creating his own cacophony.

A life had existed once for him, hard-won and delicately built. A breathtaking office with books filed to the ceiling, only those that didn’t fit inside his home itself, and that, an act of perfect self-expression as to never be replicated again. Every fiber and seam chosen specifically, with forethought and consideration. Places to meet with friends and colleagues, patients and peers, whose respect he had earned through his own skill and decorum.

Gone.

The herb garden and the antique harpsichord, the taxidermy and the Travertine, the perfectly stocked kitchen and the basement where he provided his own sustenance for cooking.

Gone.

And the boys. Arching and keening atop him, begging and moaning sweetly beneath, clinging with trembling hands to his shoulders as he heard the last sounds their lips would ever make, his cock buried in them until the moment their eyes went glassy. Artists and writers and musicians and mathematical geniuses, and some, simply too beautiful to resist plucking.

All gone.

All taken by an insufferable boy with glass-blue eyes and a mind so exquisite Hannibal could not consume it.

Beautiful, clever, strong, the only boy to willingly press into Hannibal's arms after he had learned what he was, after he had barely escaped with his life, press into his arms and kiss him deep, open his body to him again.

The one mind that had stilled Hannibal's hand with a talent so rare, so stunning that Hannibal could not take it.

Over and over and over he had said he would, had had the boy in the basement so close, had had him on his table barely breathing, his entire life in Hannibal’s hands. And he had called for his aid. He had saved him instead of ravishing the boy of all his power, all his beauty.

Hannibal plunks a key on the piano - still not his harpsichord - and hums his disapproval at it, sipping his wine and glancing towards the doorway again, where there is no sign of the boy to be seen.

It has never been a compulsion before, always a choice rather than a need, and Hannibal wonders for a moment if perhaps it is the rationalization of a compelled mind to think such things, in its own defense.

He wonders how many weeks it’s been since he’s really hunted. Stalked and seduced and promised and preyed. Long enough to make him desperate for the thrill of it, to want to reaffirm his own skill in his mind, and not merely in the eyes of the boy to whom he is teaching his skills. 

Hannibal’s hand finally unclenches from the knot in which it was wrapped, a fierce fist that he knows he cannot use against Will in that way. Would not. And in the thought of it alone, the imagination of blood against his tongue grows sticky, unsavory, as if cooling and clotting grotesque across his face. He rubs a hand across it, quiet for long minutes, and finally Hannibal feels his body begin to loosen as he goes in search of Will.

He finds the boy in the kitchen, insufferable shirt gone and just his jeans loose against him, hanging low enough to cover just up to his toes. He doesn't turn as Hannibal enters, not enough to see him, but Hannibal can see the white glimmer of headphones in the boy’s ears, explaining why that is.

He watches, sees Will reach for something in the spice cabinet, and realizes that he’s cooking, all alone in the immense kitchen - that is entirely spotless save for his work space, which also remains inordinately tidy.

Whatever it is smells divine, rich and heavy with spice, almost enough to taste by that alone. Hannibal swallows, keeps his eyes on the gentle movements of the boy, blinks when he hears him hum a few bars of what is playing, whisper the words as he turns his hips in pleasing undulations to the beat. He adds whatever he had gathered from the spice rack and closes the lid, turning to return the small box of home-grown and home-dried herbs and catches sight of Hannibal from the corner of his eye.

Slowly he removes the headphones, clicks the iPod off and folds the things away into his pocket.

A brief smile, almost shy, before Will ducks his head.

"Jambalaya," he murmurs, gesturing with a gentle shrug. "It... dad made it when I got upset or homesick a lot. I thought..."

A gentle bite to his lip before Will meets Hannibal’s eyes properly.

"I can toss it if you don't want it but... I wanted to save you making dinner today. Help, a little."

Death is a transformation, Hannibal considers, as he slips an arm around the boy’s shoulders and leans against his back. A rare one, and extraordinarily beautiful in its consideration, to experience the body’s last efforts and quiet release.

But it is not the only transformation, and this boy - his boy - is the most striking evidence of that, in a way Hannibal did not imagine existed until he found him, and now could not imagine existing without. Beyond even the capabilities of his body - to stretch and spread, fill and empty, bruise and bleed into luminous colors, to laugh or sob or both all at once against him - the radiance of his mind is what leaves Hannibal breathless. His astounding ability towards languages, quick comprehension of sciences and math, analytical with a speed that surpasses even Hannibal’s own cognition at times.

Hannibal smooths Will’s hair back from his face, and turns his head aside with a rough nuzzle against his temple, up into his curls.

And for all of that, it is Hannibal’s bed that he returns to, almost miraculously, night after night, no matter had they a quiet dinner or a savage night of sex and violence.

“It smells wonderful,” Hannibal murmurs against his cheek, eyes closed to imagine the movements of the boy’s hands that he feels beneath him. “Have you missed me?”

Will stills, not like a cornered animal but someone who is just as keenly feeling every motion against him as Hannibal is against himself. He smiles, turns to feel the nuzzle against him, gently bites his lip.

"I really did," he says softly, brings up his hands to settle against the one around his shoulders, pressing back against Hannibal against him.

"I had breakfast and cleared up," he tells him quietly, as the nuzzling continues, warm and familiar, a gentle claiming for the moment, a return. "Took a long bath and read. Then read in the garden, moved into the house after dark."

Will hums and rocks back gently, just enough.

"Today was all Lithuanian," he tells him, in the language. "I wanted to practice and surprise you when you got home."

Will swallows, opens his eyes again and gently grinds his teeth in consideration. 

"Have you missed me?" he asks very quietly.

Hannibal breathes in the scent of the boy, surrounded by spices here, sweat beneath from lying in the sun, the waft of jasmine from the garden and salt from the sea air drifting distant beyond that.

“I am glad to be near you again,” Hannibal answers in the warm, rumbling language that sits so perfectly against his voice. He strokes Will’s hair again, brings the boy’s head back against his chest to hold him there, and adds with genuine pleasure. “Your accent is improving.”

Effortlessly, the language gives way to French, sighed into Will’s hair as his other arm slides around his chest, leaning heavy over him, possessive.

“I was giving thought to eating your heart again,” admits the man, tangling a kiss in the curls against his cheek. “It would be the sweetest taste I could ever experience, and yet it is hard for me to comprehend that you would not return from that, as well, as you have so much. Even Balder had his mistletoe, I suppose.”

Will shivers gently, turns his head first against Hannibal’s neck, then away to arch his neck for him, vulnerable and presented.

He remembers how often Hannibal had once spoken of eating Will’s heart, taking it apart and devouring it as the rest of the boy. He remembers his own hushed request that it be raw, that his entire essence fill Hannibal when he takes him.

Now, the thought is strange to him.

Will knows he will not come back from such a desire, will breathe his last and see Hannibal consume him, but not see him after, and it's that, that gives the boy pause, the draws his swallow thick, that earns another shiver.

He doesn't want to go.

He doesn’t want to leave Hannibal when he had just found him again.

"Let me stay awake when you take it?" he breathes at last, turning to nuzzle into Hannibal's warmth again. "So I can see you?" Before I go, before I expire for your pleasure.

It should frighten him how easy the words are to say, how quickly he would sacrifice himself for the man despite the ache in his chest already at the thought of leaving him.

The words run cold beneath Hannibal’s skin, his pulse quickening at the promise of it. That this boy who has given so much already would so willingly surrender that too, if it would satisfy Hannibal’s hunger. And it would, that, for as long as he had to savor the heat of that muscle that beats so resoundingly for him, but then there would be no more.

Nothing.

He pushes a hand through Will’s hair and pulls the boy close against him, arms tight to feel him near and trembling.

“You would,” Hannibal murmurs. “You would watch with fading vision as I spread you wide, skin and bone and sinew, and consumed you, entirely.”

He swallows, a click in his throat.

“But you are already a part of me, dear boy. And as I felt the beating of your heart slow and still within my hands my own would do the same within me.”

Will wriggles, enough to loosen the hold on him so he can turn in Hannibal's hold and press his face against his chest, parting his lips to taste the heart beat there, to feel it against his mouth as though he, too, were consuming it.

"I love you," Will tells him, voice quiet and words heavy like a comfort over Hannibal’s shoulders.

When Will looks up, he is smiling, warm and bright, pressed so close to Hannibal already, before he stands on his toes to kiss him. Gentle at first, then deeper, needier, until his lips part wide and his skinny arms wrap around the man in front of him.

He loves him, he has missed him, he wants him.

With an easy movement, Hannibal tucks an arm beneath Will and lifts him onto the counter, spilling herbs and scattering the utensils so carefully kept in order. He presses between his boy’s thighs, against his chest, leaning up now to kiss him in return, and feel Will grin against his lips.

“You are enough,” Hannibal murmurs softly. “Just as you are.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I suppose that there are numerous ways in which I may devour you, far less permanent.”_
> 
> _Will shivers, delighted, toes curling where his feet hang splayed and loose over the counter. He knows Hannibal is aware of just how deliberate his presentation is, knows that deep enough down he relishes the wanton appearance, the simplicity of Will's need for him._
> 
> _He frames Hannibal's face in his hands and brushing their lips together, laughs._
> 
> _"I suppose."_

He works his fingers beneath the waistband of Will’s jeans, against his bared belly, across to his hips. Fingernails press crescents into his skin where he finds no underwear beneath, and a brow lifts in mild amusement at this.

“It’s almost as though you were waiting for me,” suggests Hannibal with a purr. “Good boy.”

The fly is unzipped slowly, baring the dark curls of hair beneath it, and Hannibal turns his wrist to press against him, beneath the too-tight jeans, pulling them snugger still to feel his boy stir beneath his touch.

“I suppose that there are numerous ways in which I may devour you, far less permanent.”

Will shivers, delighted, toes curling where his feet hang splayed and loose over the counter. He knows Hannibal is aware of just how deliberate his presentation is, knows that deep enough down he relishes the wanton appearance, the simplicity of Will's need for him.

He frames Hannibal's face in his hands and brushing their lips together, laughs.

"I suppose."

It's easier, now, the tension gone from between them. Will feels as though he is sinking into a warm bath, the way his shoulders relax.

He gasps quietly as Hannibal keeps stroking him, squirms happily on the counter.

“Up,” Hannibal instructs him, eyes narrowing in pleasure as Will plants his hands on the counter to raise his hips, holds them there effortlessly arched for Hannibal to slide his jeans free, down to his thighs, lowering only to lift his legs for Hannibal to snatch them off his bare feet. He scarcely has time to discard them before those skinny legs snare around his hips and pull him back in again, slender fingers pressed to Hannibal’s cheeks as they kiss.

“We have so much time still together,” he murmurs. “I will show you Spain and France, Turkey and Hungary. Russia and the steppes. Feed myself on your enthusiasm, and then take you in every city in which we find ourselves. You will overlook the Vatican, bent across the railing of our hotel. Stifle your gasps upon the terraces of Tangier. Spread yourself before Annapurna.”

The bottle of olive oil already open beside them is smeared slick against Hannibal’s fingers before they find their way between Will’s spread thighs, to part him wider and circle all too gently, all too slow against his opening.

“I would hear your voice,” whispers Hannibal against him, gaze darkened with delight. “Fill this house with it.”

Will sets his heels against the cabinets beneath him and bites his lip at the slow gentle preparation. He imagines their journeys - too dangerous to take now, while Will’s disappearance is so fresh - imagines the early mornings and his excitement, near-bouncing with the need to explore. Knowing that some mornings it will be permitted while others he will be dragged back beneath the covers and held silently for a longer nap.

And others still where he will be bared nearly in public, forced to endure as Hannibal plays with him, whispers filthy words into his ear and forces him not to cum.

Will moans, shivers, arches more to feel Hannibal just a little harder against him.

"Anything," he sighs.

Another mark is left, sucked against Will’s collarbone, his skin becoming more golden by the day now that they are free from the dreariness of Baltimore. If the sensation of warmth had a taste, it would be this, the sun-kissed skin of the most beautiful boy that Hannibal has ever known.

“Spread for me,” intones Hannibal, noses brushing against each other as he leans closer to bend Will backwards. A second finger is added, a third just after, a stretch made slick but still too quick.

Will arches, spine twisting and hips rocking down against the pressure, and Hannibal presses his other hand to the small of Will’s back to curve him deeper still.

“Watch.” Soft-voiced but with rough edges, Hannibal already cruelly hard inside his pants, he catches Will by the hair to bend him forward, flexible and lithe and lovely, to see Hannibal’s fingers move inside of him, stretch and splay to spread him wide.

Will swallows, makes a sound, lips red and parted as his cheeks color, watching Hannibal's fingers disappear into him over and over again. He shivers when Hannibal brushes against his prostate, makes another sound and spreads wider.

It is always entirely intoxicating, knowing how deeply Hannibal wants Will to feel, remember him. And Will always relishes it, arching and bowing against him.

Hannibal withdraws his fingers, curls them together, thumb pressed against the slick curve of the other three, and sets them against Will’s hole again, not quite pushing in but feeling Will tremble at the prospect of four. When he does push in, he grips Will’s hair hard to make sure he watches.

It's tight, a stretch that always nears painful that Will always endures, as he does now, with a whimper and a shiver of pain.

"Hannibal -"

"Spread wider, Will, you will take them all."

Will moans, fingers white against the counter, but he arches himself into the sensation and spreads his thighs obediently wider with a keen.

A transformation, obscene and beautiful, without the need of death. A crimson flush spreads across Will’s skin as his lips part soundless when Hannibal turns his fingers to work them a little deeper still. When he releases his hair, he knows Will won’t move, will continue to watch even as his eyes seek to fall closed, and when he remains so perfectly perched, Hannibal nuzzles against his hair, kissing softly, tenderness paired with the harsh stretch around his fingers.

Hannibal presses a warm palm to Will’s thigh, strokes soothing against the muscles that tremble weakly beneath his touch. They do not yet bear poetry on them, but the mark shared long ago, which Hannibal finds and rubs a thumb against, the small circle of a cigarette branded claiming into his skin.

“Can you take more?” Hannibal asks softly, a rare question, only in particular circumstances when he feels his own desires risk doing an unintentional permanent harm. 

It is a challenge, as well, for Will to push himself and be honest all at once, and Hannibal lifts Will’s chin with a finger for their eyes to meet.

Will’s eyes are wide and he shivers, brows furrowing in pain but he does not look away, does not beg for this to end. He swallows and shakes his head.

"No," he whispers, a rare time his voice genuinely hitches in worry or fear, like it had when Hannibal had caned him into silence, a place beyond pain where Will’s breathing had evened out, his body had grown tense and lax all at once.

He shakes his head again and bites his lip.

"But it will be easier for me on my knees... to take more."

He's shaking, cock hard against his stomach as he sits bent and curved to Hannibal's unreasonable demands of him.

Slowly, drawing a breath at the gasp that sounds from Will when he does, Hannibal withdraws his fingers and lets the boy slump against him. An arm around his shoulders, a kiss pressed to his temple, Hannibal regards him curiously.

“Have you ever, before?”

With a hard swallow, Will shakes his head.

“Nor have I,” responds Hannibal with a note of distinct curiosity, scooping Will near him to lower him from the counter. “Go and wait for me.”

He does not tell Will where or how, lets him decide, a minor acquiescence to the act of submission that has just been offered to him in exchange. The stove is turned to a bare simmer, time enough for the jambalaya to continue its slow cook, and Hannibal washes his hands before tidying the counter and folding Will’s jeans.

They and the olive oil are carried with him, along with an expression still of intrigue, as he goes to find his boy.

He finds him in the last place he looks, their bedroom. Will still beautifully nude, now also bent delightfully on all fours, blue eyes wide as Will looks over his shoulder at Hannibal. He is both fearful and intensely curious, shifting perhaps unconsciously to spread his thighs for Hannibal. 

He has never done this before, never allowed it, by the time someone had had the courage or idea to fist him, Will had a belt around their throat or a knife in their stomach.

But with Hannibal...

He regards the oil, the way Hannibal stands and just takes him in, the way the look sears, makes Will bend forward, deepen the curve of his back, arch for him.

The jeans are set aside, the oil brought to the nightstand as Hannibal circles slowly around his boy. He regards him as one might a work of art, wrought by a master, newly discovered. Will is beautiful, always, but Hannibal holds a special affection for his body bent in this way, in particular. Presented and spread waiting for him, and Hannibal aware that if he ever chose to do so he could wait for hours before tending to his boy, and Will would wait bowed for him the entire time.

A thrum of pleasure twists in his stomach and he straightens.

Not tonight.

Instead, Hannibal spreads warm hands over Will’s back, leaning low over him from beside the bed. Skilled fingers work loose the muscles tight in his shoulders, careful not to dig into any of the countless bites or bruises that bloom across his body, and Hannibal bends over him to kiss the path his fingers forge.

“Breathe, Will,” he murmurs, and hums soft approval when he feels Will’s ribs expand beneath his hands and mouth. “Will you give this to me, beautiful boy?”

The pads of his fingers circle slow against Will’s opening, still tender, warm beneath his touch. Another kiss is pressed to Will’s back, and he skims a hand up through his boy’s hair.

Will groans gently, shifts further into the bed and bites his lip.

"Yes."

He trembles still, more with the admission, with the permission, and Will sighs when Hannibal presses two fingers into him, spreads and curls them until Will’s hum is a vibration of pleasure, until his hips push back in a needy wanton way.

Three fingers and Will moans.

"I want you to have me every way." He sighs, blush darkening against his cheeks, across his nose. "I want to feel you," another sigh, fingers curling tight then relaxing in the sheets.

Will shivers just imagining the stretch tighter, harsher than this, than four fingers.

"Oh," he licks his lips, "please..."

Hannibal hushes him softly, amusement wrinkling beneath his eyes as Will begs already for more. He slicks his fingers again before adding a third. There is a fleeting displeasure as oil drips to stain his sheets, but readily forgotten when Will pushes his hips back and lets his legs spread wide, working himself in such exquisitely wanton movements that Hannibal hardly has to move his hand at all.

Without leaving Will empty - he stretches his fingers, rewarded with a tremulous little sound as he does - Hannibal shifts further onto the bed. Behind and beside his boy, where he can observe the movement of himself inside of him, and still keep a hand against his back to steady him, ground him in Hannibal’s nearness.

“Brave little wolf,” Hannibal murmurs. “Four, now.”

And with a delicate twist, the tips his fingers - all but his thumb - are turned into his boy’s body, stretching his sensitive opening to a beautiful red, hot around his touch.

Will grits his teeth and presses his face to the mattress with a quiet sound. He has taken four before, for Hannibal, many times when he had wanted to watch Will squirm, had wanted to hear the soft pained sounds escape his lips.

Now his thighs tighten, he shivers, but he does not move away from the gentle press of Hannibal’s hand. He moans for him, lips gently parting against the pillow, one hand stretching forward to skim the headboard with his nails, a bare click, but enough.

In truth he loves this, can feel the adoration of the man radiating off of him when he sees Will this way - entirely his, entirely willing - bent for him and spreading to his fingers.

Will gasps, shivers, laughs softly and makes a little keen of pain when Hannibal pushes deeper.

"You will take another."

Will bites his lip, breathing heavier and nods.

"Yes..."

“Good boy.”

More oil is applied, generously and with little mind for the sheets that will have to be replaced, the pressure withdrawn for Hannibal to realign his fingers, joined together at the tips. He parts his lips with his tongue, mouth just open as he presses back again, slowly, carefully.

The sound that aches from Will’s lips as he grips the sheets is intoxicating, and Hannibal feels it echoed in a deep rumble from inside himself in response.

“Breathe,” he tells Will again, satisfied to hear a shaking sigh of breath and when Will’s body relaxes around him as he does. “You are capable of this. Only you, little wolf. To feel me inside you entirely.”

Bowed forward onto his shoulders, Will trembles beneath the hand that Hannibal leaves to rest against the small of his back, thumb stroking slowly to ease him, and Hannibal finds himself overcome by the sounds and sensations building as he presses deeper still. Slick and warm, he works in tender movements inside of him, fingers spreading as they can, and Will opening for him in increments, stretched wide and tender.

Will gasps, tenses, fists his hands in the sheets and whimpers.

Too much pressure, too tight, and Will whimpers, bites the pillow to keep the shaking at bay. He can feel how patiently Hannibal stretches him, how carefully he works, but the pain is undeniable, still glowing red in throbs behind his eyes.

"Hannibal -" he sighs, groans and trembles harder, "Hurts, please, I can't -"

"You can. Sweet boy, beautiful boy, breathe."

"It hurts."

A sob, dry but harsh, and Will jerks in pain, twists, tries to pull away as Hannibal soothes gently over his back.

"Stay still."

"Please."

Slicker still, to ease the way, but the pleas continue and when Will jerks away again, Hannibal stops, holds his fingers where they are - halfway to the knuckle, and Will gaping wide from it.

“Do you wish me to stop?”

It is an honest question, asked without accusation, and Will knows that if he nodded now, it would. Hannibal would carefully draw his fingers out, and pull Will against him to warm the chill from his skin, with reassuring murmurs until his shudders slowed.

Will chokes back a hard swallow, and makes himself loosen his fingers in the sheets.

“No,” he breathes, and the swell of pride that spreads through Hannibal’s ribs feels as though he will burst from it.

“You are extraordinary,” Hannibal worships against Will’s shoulder, over the heaving of his ribs, down his arched spine and up to just above where his fingers are still pressed. “Slower, then? More oil? I would wait for this, dear boy, as long as you need it.”

In truth, it is already an exceptional feeling. His fingers surrounded by twitching heat, squeezed against his hand. He remembers earlier, envisioning gripping Will’s bare beating heart in his fist, and rumbles in profound pleasure with how satisfying this is as substitute.

Will makes another sound, a shuddering sort of gasp, flexes his fingers and arches his back.

"More oil," he whispers. "Please."

In truth it is the pressure, the overwhelming tightness and stretch that draws Will entirely breathless, the anticipation of more pain.

Always the anticipation of it.

Yet pain Will can take, pain Will enjoys, at Hannibal’s hand especially. He thinks of the praise, the warmth and pride radiating from the man above him, thinks of how he will whisper against Will that he is beautiful, incredible, how he is so good, Hannibal's own and only.

He feels the trickle of oil cool against his skin and pushes up on all fours, legs spread, back arching as he pushes back against Hannibal's fingers, seeking them deeper in deliberate, wanton need.

"More," he whimpers, sobs coming quick now, like gasps but weaker, clicking in his throat, weak little things.

He cries out in pain and drops his head between his shoulders.

"God Hannibal please..."

_I need this, I want this, it hurts…_

“Hush,” Hannibal tells him, not unkindly. “Focus on your breath. Fill yourself with it, release it slowly. Your lungs. Your stomach. And back out again. Remarkable boy.”

He turns his hand a little, to work Will wider still, the largest stretch yet to come. Hannibal himself can hardly breathe for the anticipation of it, reminding himself to stay focused on Will’s breath, the tenor of his whimpers, the shudders of his body. Aware of the strains he is undertaking, his exquisite ability to take so much, and alert to when those sounds become truly those of a pain greater than that which he should experience merely from the act alone.

“This will be the worst of it,” murmurs Hannibal, rubbing slowly up and down the length of Will’s back, down the front of his thighs, beneath to press his palm to the boy’s belly. A comforting touch to sooth him as much as he is able.

“More,” Will breathes again, head dropped between his arms, and Hannibal kisses his praise into Will’s skin wherever he can as he delicately turns his wrist, to press in past his knuckles.

The sound Will makes is almost inhuman, a weak wail that stretches till it snaps on a whimper and a wet sob. Will is shaking, entire body tense as he forces his breathing to even out as Hannibal had instructed, breathing in slowly and releasing it on shaking gasps of pain as he feels the stretch acutely.

"Fuck."

He doesn’t feel the wrath he usually does at the word, just the harsh intake of breath from the man over him, within him, deeper than anyone ever has been or would be again.

"Hannibal -" he sobs softly, feels his lips stretch in a shocked smile, a laugh pulled from him.

"Holy shit."

Though transfixed by the sight of Will’s body around him in such a way, the laughter draws a long look, irrepressibly fond, to where Will watches over his shoulder, blue eyes wide and lashes damp with tears.

“Please do not,” Hannibal murmurs, amusement laced through the overwhelming pleasure tingling up the length of his spine, warm and dizzying. He swallows roughly and works his hand deeper now, increments at a time, a shift forward and a long pause, though the worst of it is over. He fills him now, instead, made breathless himself by the sensation of Will’s body closed so tightly around him, an indescribable heat of his living, breathing boy who has let Hannibal inside of him, whose pulse races still, Hannibal can feel, against his fingers.

There was never a need to tear him open to find this heat, knowing how quickly it would cool and leave Hannibal forever chilled for its absence.

“You are,” and now Hannibal laughs, a warm sound and a rare thing to be heard, “incredible, Will. You are the fiercest creature I have ever known.”

His unoccupied hand runs the length of Will’s body, twisting up through his hair to tug it gently, pressing down the length of his back, kissing his hips, his spine, anywhere his lips can sink and find purchase.

Another gentle movement, coaxing and slow, brings Hannibal to his wrist inside of him, and audibly gasps at the sensation of Will around him, entirely.

The sight is nearly more than he can take, and he nuzzles gently against the curve of Will’s ass, breath pooling hot against it.

“I wish that you could see how beautiful you are in this moment,” he sighs. “Always, but now, it is extraordinary. You are, entirely, extraordinary. My beautiful, impossible boy. My little wolf. I love you, Will. I will have no other.”

Will moans again, shuddering at the feeling of being so utterly filled and so utterly adored. He takes his time to settle his breathing, to feel this entirely, to hold himself on all fours and feel Hannibal kiss him hot and possessive over and over his trembling skin.

Then Hannibal slowly turns his wrist and Will keens, eyes closed and skin hot, breathing shaking again, pushed from his easy pattern. He whines, bites his lip and laughs again. It is a deliciously strange feeling. He is shivering still, pleasant waves of it caressing him to the bones. Will curls his toes and gently rocks back.

"It really hurts," he admits, whispering, but he doesn’t jerk away like before, he moans sweetly when Hannibal turns his hand again.

"God, Hannibal," Will swallows, curls his fingers in the sheets harder. He can feel himself blush hard before he continues.

"I want to cum, like this, for you." He whimpers softly, "Just like this."

The declarations of ancient heroes suddenly resound through Hannibal - oaths to raze cities to the ground and decimate nations, all for the maddening, consuming love of another too beautiful to merit anything less but whatever they desire. There is nothing imaginable that Will might ask of Hannibal that he would not deliver to him on a silver charger, no sacrifice he would require that the man would not perform with pleasure for him.

Hannibal moves his fingers, the barest gesture, and shudders as Will moans around him.

He leans nearer, careful not to move his hand unduly, and lifts the other to Will’s length, darkly flushed and leaking in drips against the sheets from the fullness inside of him. He grips it and brings his hand down it in a long pull, sighing against the curved cheek rosy pink beneath his cheek.

To see himself this way, taken into another so wholly, to see Will give of himself so entirely, could stop Hannibal’s heart in place with its beauty should he let it. His rim red, stretched wide around Hannibal’s wrist, body quaking from the exertion of it, a soft laugh on Will’s aching sighs -

“Perfect,” Hannibal whispers against him, and begins to stroke Will in earnest. “You are perfect.”

"Oh god," Will slips to French, not the refined tongue Hannibal had been adamant he learn but the patois he uses when too far from logic, too high from pain. He murmurs something worshipful, keens in pain and shivers so hard he squeezes against Hannibal’s hand hard enough to draw a gasp from him.

"Hannibal, Hannibal -"

His body is on fire, full, shivering, fingers white against the sheets, lips parted on a series of delighted sobs and high whimpers.

"Yes, yes, yes, god, Hannibal, oh god -"

He arches back, coils his shoulders unfurls them, bends to press to the mattress as he trembles.

"I'm going to cum," he sobs, flushed dark, sweat slick between his shoulders. "Hannibal, I'm going to cum..."

“Remarkable,” murmurs Hannibal, as even now Will resists his own release. With every fiber of his body pulled tight to the point of snapping, his mind overwhelmed and words made senseless in a cacophony of languages from the sensation of being so full, still he waits for Hannibal’s word.

With a deeper, stranger stretch, Hannibal begins to curl his fingers, languidly, one at a time against his palm. A fist, made inside his boy, so much like the one he raised to him not long before, now coiled in submission to Will rather than lifted in dominance.

“Please,” Will breathes, but as Hannibal adjusts his hand, the girth of it widens, pressing down against Will’s prostate. The immense and ceaseless pressure of it snaps stars behind Will’s closed eyes and tears a sound from him that is entirely primal, a quaking groan poured into the sheets beneath him as his body follows suit and his seed spills in hot streaks across Hannibal’s fingers.

The boy hardly has time to fill his lungs with air again before he sobs an apology that Hannibal quickly hushes.

“Beautiful boy,” he murmurs, tasting the spread of his boy from his fingers. Cleaned almost catlike, he then reaches to stroke Will’s hair, and ease the shudders of pain and pleasure, excitement and endurance from his body. “I am so proud of you.”

With just as much care as went into going into him, Hannibal begins to - reluctantly - shift his hand free. Fingers stretched back into a point, he watches as Will’s body transforms itself to fit his own, as Will himself becomes far more than merely an insolent, wonderful boy, almost transcendent, otherworldly as he bows shaking across the bed, whispering in a mixture of languages that each drip wondrously from his tongue.

The widest point of his hand is reached and passed with hardly a sound beyond the whimpers already tripping uncontrolled off Will’s tongue. The air is cold against Hannibal’s hand as it finally emerges, and he watches in heavy-lidded pleasure as Will’s body slowly closes behind him again.

“I am so proud of you,” he repeats softly, and there are no words he could mean more sincerely than that.

He watches Will, for the moment still incoherent, before leaning to kiss his temple, his cheek, standing to move to the bathroom to wash his hands and gather a cool cloth to wipe Will down with until he's more conscious, more stable to take a shower on his own.

When he returns, Will is curled into a tight ball, tears seeping from his eyes in a way he can't control. And stranger still, the boy is smiling.

"Will," soft fingers in damp curls and Will blinks his eyes open, sniffs wetly and laughs, reaching out to take Hannibal's hand and kiss it, the palm, the knuckles, fingertips, back up to the wrist and higher still, rolling lightly to make room for Hannibal beside him.

"That felt so good," he sniffs, sighs softly and settles against Hannibal’s chest. "And god, it hurt, Hannibal, it really hurt."

Will seems entirely content, happy even, despite the tears still falling free, eyes red-rimmed and so, so bright. And Hannibal considers, perhaps, that this is a rare occasion when Will has pushed himself far enough for a sub drop, and it makes him all the more beautiful. 

Hannibal surrounds the boy in his arms, with a leg twined around his, letting the little thing's weight settle against his body.

"I have told many boys that I've never known a creature such as them," he muses softly. "You are the only one to whom I have meant it."

He tilts his head, to watch his fierce, brave little wolf sigh against his chest, and strokes his hair from his face.

"You astound me," murmurs Hannibal. "Leave me speechless. Breathless. I am capable of many things, but not nearly so many as you."

Sighing against the small, slender hand that plays across his lips, Hannibal smiles softly, and rubs his hand in broad strokes down Will's spine.

"I love you, dear boy. My Will. My only."

Will smiles wider, sobs quietly simply to catch his breath and tilts his head to look at Hannibal properly. He is fully conscious now, fully aware, and he looks happy, relieved, to be in Hannibal's arms despite the man being the one to have nearly split him open - or perhaps because of it.

"I love you." He sighs back, means every word, and pulls himself up closer to kiss Hannibal deeply, let his eyes close and his tears press cool to Hannibal's cheeks.

"I love what you do to me, what we do together," he whispers, "anything you ask, I will give you."

He nuzzles against Hannibal almost painfully before settling, fingers splaying over his shirt, his chest.

"Come shower with me," he sighs, bites his lip, slips his hand down to stroke against Hannibal, still achingly hard in his pants.

A hum rumbles low beneath the boy, and Hannibal sinks into another kiss before he answers, "A bath perhaps, instead. You will let me wash you."

Adore you.

Worship you.

Exalt and praise and cherish.

He presses his lips to the boy's brow and slips from beneath him, tugging a blanket over his bare shoulders to warm Will in his absence. A bath is drawn, hot enough that it will afford them time to linger, subtle scents and oils added to it to calm, to heal.

When he returns, to an impish little smile that Will turns against the pillow, it is all Hannibal can do not to drop to his knees beside him, overcome.

He imagines that his hand is still warmed by his boy's body, and shivers.

Will is lifted tenderly from where he lies, cradled easily in the man's arms, held against his chest until he is settled into the bath. Hannibal joins him, careful not to jostle him overmuch, after folding his clothes neatly aside.

Will settles heavy, back against Hannibal, arching into the gentle strokes of the cloth to get him clean. His eyes are closed, expression entirely clear as he comes closer to just dozing against the man, the water pleasantly hot, aromatic.

"You really enjoyed it," Will tells him, and there is no accusation there, no disgust, just a pleased statement of fact before he turns just enough to rest his hand back against Hannibal's cock and stroke him.

"I've never been so full," Will moans softly, arches more, strokes more deliberately, "So tight and hot it was almost hard to breathe, but knowing it was you..."

He squirms gently, cheeks dark again as he feels Hannibal growl softly against his ear.

"What was the best part?" He asks breathlessly, "for you?"

In truth, there was not a moment that Hannibal will not remember indefinitely, fondly, forever.

"An extraordinary feeling," Hannibal sighs, "to be inside you so entirely. A gift that you would allow me to do so, to feel myself move in you without need for rending, cracking, tearing."

He adjusts, legs spreading wider around the boy, to allow Will easier reach to his cock. Hannibal purrs against Will's shoulder as his slight fingers work against it, tugging softly.

"The moment I will remember most," he considers, "is to see you so filled, and hear you still laugh and ask for more. Fearless little wolf."

Hannibal strokes a hand through Will's hair to bring the boy back fully against his chest, head on Hannibal's shoulder. The elegant arch of his neck is befallen with unhurried kisses and murmured words, languages Will does and does not yet know, all saying the same thing in tone and breath: _I love you, I need you, without you this is all for nothing._

Will gasps, flushing darker, fingers working faster against Hannibal to bring him closer still, from his own words, his own memories of the squirming little thing atop him now.

The moment Will remembers most is being brought to release by the tightness, the depth at which Hannibal could feel him, and above all else the gentleness of it. The slow motions, the soft turns that felt entirely magnified with the amount Will was taking.

But never cruel.

Never more than he could handle.

"I want you," he moans softly, twisting his wrist and holding tight just beneath the head of Hannibal's cock as he arches his neck more and draws his body back, still pressed to Hannibal, but rubbing himself against him in a desperately provocative way.

Will bites his lip and grins.

"I want to feel you again."

**Author's Note:**

>  **Desiderium:** an ardent desire or longing, particularly for something once had.


End file.
